What's preventing a House/Senate energy bill conference?

07/06/16 5:10 PM

WASHINGTON, July 5, 2016 - The Senate could conceivably vote
this week to replace ongoing backroom discussions with a formal House/Senate
conference to reconcile the two chambers’ very different energy bills.

A Senate Republican leadership staff
member assured Agri-Pulse on Tuesday
that the only remaining obstacle to launching the conference is the Senate’s
packed schedule, which leaves little floor time before the body adjourns July
15 for the party conventions and the Senate’s summer break. The necessary next
step is for the Senate to vote to appoint energy bill conferees to meet with
counterparts already appointed by the House. “So it’s just a question of when
we can slot it,” the staffer says. He adds that he’s confident that “if we had
the vote, we’d win on it.”

On the House side, a Republican aide told Agri-Pulse that the House is equally
committed to delivering a comprehensive energy bill that is sufficiently
bipartisan to secure President Obama’s signature. Anything less, the aide
insists, would be a waste of years of bipartisan efforts.

Recalling that the Senate’s energy bill passed with a
solidly bipartisan 85-12 vote in April (with all 12 nay votes from
Republicans), the Senate staffer says that Senate Democrats “would have a hard
time voting against going to conference on something that they all voted for.”
He explains that since Democrats would have the option of opposing whatever
energy bill emerges from the House/Senate conference, “I don’t see what their
concern is about conferencing with the House… I just think they’re getting
pressured to not have it seem as if the Senate is working again.”

One sign of intense pressure on Senate Democrats comes from the
June 27 letter from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) urging senators
to “Oppose the Motion to Agree to Conference on the House-passed amendment to
S. 2012” – which would replace S. 2012 with the
text of the House’s H.R.
8energy bill.

Contrasting the separate Senate and House energy bills, the
LCV letter charges that “While the Senate energy package was a bipartisan
compromise and the result of many months of hard work by Senators Cantwell and
Murkowski, the House version is a radical giveaway to polluting fossil fuel
industries that would also undermine the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act,
National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and other bedrock
environmental laws.”

The LCV letter adds that the House bill:

·“fails to include
the most positive provisions in the Senate energy bill, including the
reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), energy
efficiency provisions, and needed funding for clean energy,”

·“contains
efficiency provisions that would increase energy use and costs to consumers,”

·“allows pipelines
to be built on National Park land without the necessary environmental reviews,”

·“could lock in
dirty fossil energy for decades to come at a time that we should be investing
in cleaner, cheaper alternatives,”

·“weakens
environmental review for the hardrock mining industry and jeopardizes the water
quality of nearby communities,”

·“would undermine
investments in science and federal research and development.”

The League of Conservation Voters isn’t alone in its environmental
concerns. In a June 28 letter,
24 groups including the LCV, 350.org, Food & Water Watch, Greenpeace USA,
the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society, warn that the House bill contains
“an energy efficiency title that actually weakens energy efficiency standards,
deep cuts to Department of Energy-­supported research and development . . . and
the rubber-stamping of new pipelines through national parks.” The letter
concludes: “Rejecting a conference with the current House offer is essential to
protect against harm to our environment.”

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch
who released her Frackopoly
book in June, insists that oil and gas industry interests “are using their
monopoly power – economic and political – to force public and private
investments in infrastructure that will ensure, at least, another 40 years of
oil and gas use.”

Hauter’s book argues that rather than follow the House
bill’s plan to build more fossil-fuel infrastructure, there is an urgent need
to “ban fracking and keep fossil fuels in the ground” in order “to create a
sustainable energy future.”

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The nonprofit American Council
for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), calculates that in contrast to the
House energy bill, the Senate bill’s energy efficiency provisions could deliver
$60 billion in direct benefits. Kateri Callahan, president of the nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy, explained in an Environment
& Energy Publishing June 23 interview
that “the alliance itself is opposed to H.R. 8 as it currently stands because
it actually rolls back efficiency gains that we’ve made in this country, and
the assessment is that it would cost $20 billion in extra energy costs, wasted
energy that we don't need to use, and that translates into a lot more
pollution, a lot more energy use.”

Despite attacks on the House’s energy bill, including veto
threats from the White House, Senate Energy Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski,
R-Alaska, told reporters last week that in meetings with Democrats on the
energy bill “we made significant headway.” Dismissing calls for taking
controversial House provisions “off the table” for the House/Senate conference,
Murkowski insisted that in the ongoing negotiations “There’s nothing that we
have singled out and taken off the tree.”

One Democratic Senate staff member close to the discussions
tells Agri-Pulse that “productive and
high-level” conversations are continuing and are expected to lead to agreement
on conferencing with the House. But the staffer indicated that the remaining
hurdle is drafting an agreed joint text to be considered by the conference – a
joint text that somehow would account for “the multiple veto threats of the
legislative package that the House sent over to the Senate.”

This week’s guest on Open Mic is Ken Dallmier, President and COO of Clarkson Grain Company. While the global grain business is dominated by supply, demand and now trade wars, this Illinois-based company functions under a customer-focused mindset. Dallmier says this generation of consumer demand is dominated by a different set of social values leading to questions over the way food is produced and the prices they’re willing to pay. Sustainability, organic and non-GMO are providing farmers an income stream isolated from traditional market forces.

Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Environmental Protection Agency Acting Administrator of the Andrew Wheeler recently announced their intent to reassess and correct the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.

The world of agriculture extends beyond what’s growing in your field or living in your barn, and here at Agri-Pulse, we understand that. We make it our duty to inform you of the most up-to-date agricultural and rural policy decisions being made in Washington D.C. and examine how they will affect you – the farmer, the lobbyist, the government employee, the educator, the consultant and the concerned citizen.